Indiana legislators hear ‘Tiger King’ bill to ban public interaction with lion, tiger and bear cubs

(The Center Square) – An Indiana Senate committee voted to advance a bill this week that would ban close contact with big cats and bears, prohibiting a “Tiger King” situation where tigers and other animals are bred for profit by allowing the public hold and take photos with the cubs.

Rep. David Abbott, R-Rome City, mentioned the show as he introduced the bill to senators, and referenced the former owner of an Indiana exotic animal compound named Tim Stark, who was featured in the first season.

“What happened there was really a disaster, a catastrophe for these animals,” said Abbot. “The ramifications of that is what brought this bill, so that this doesn’t happen again.”

Stark was the founder of Wildlife in Need in Charlestown, Indiana, just across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. In 2016 he was charged with more than 120 violations of the Animal Welfare Act and in 2020, his license to exhibit animals was revoked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wildlife in Need was fined more than $300,000, with Stark personally fined another $40,000, and the facility was shut down.

Volunteers who had worked at the compound told reporters in early 2020 big cats were kept in small cages and were underfed, and many animals brought to the compound were fed to other animals instead of being rehabilitated.

House Bill 1248 would prohibit a person who owns a lion, tiger, leopard, snow leopard, jaguar, mountain lion or bear from allowing members of the public to come into direct contact with the animals – to include handling and taking photos without a “permanent physical barrier” between the people and the animals.

It would not apply to owners, trainers, contractors, interns, a professional production crew or to veterinarians.

The bill passed the Indiana House on Jan. 27 by a vote of 69-27 and is being sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Blake Doriot. It passed out of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and is expected to be heard by the full Senate in the coming weeks.

The hearing attracted a Grizzly Adams lookalike named Jeff Watson, known as “the bear man” of Indiana.

“I find it a little strange that I’m in here speaking for a bill when I’ve been fighting this legislation for years,” he said.

Watson has owned and trained bears for more than three decades and has appeared on a number of television shows with his bears over the years, including “Walker, Texas Ranger.” He now owns two brown bears named Bob and Screech and does small-group encounters with them at Wilstem Wildlife Park in Paoli.

“Me personally, I don’t want the public getting near my bears,” he said. “I’m not that guy.”

But, he says, he would like to be able to do what he did a decade ago, when he brought a bear cub to Indianapolis and Gov. Mitch Daniels held it while standing in the parking lot of the Statehouse.

Watson said he was glad the bill doesn’t ban ownership of bears, as an earlier version of the bill would have, and said he was willing to “meet in the middle” on this issue.

“My main concern as an animal handler is that eventually this is all going away,” he said. “I’ve done this for 33 years. I feel like if I give up a little something, then maybe I can live a little bit longer.”

Watson remembered a time when there was bear wrestling in Indiana, run by a man named Sam Mazzola. Mazzola’s license to exhibit the bears was revoked by the USDA in 2006 after an investigation into complaints.

Abbott worked with the Humane Society of Indiana on HB 1248, saying the bill was brought to him by the organization – an organization that Watson said wants to put him out of business.

“It’s an animal rights organization,” he said. “Me, personally, I’m for animal welfare. I’m not for animal rights. Animal rights is, they have the same rights as human beings. You can call your dog your companion animal, but you didn’t meet it at a bar. You own it. If it bites somebody, the judge will tell you it’s yours.”

Samantha Morton, the Indiana state director of the Human Society of the United States, told senators the bill is a “common-sense bill that would protect infant bears and big cats who suffer from a lack of maternal care and proper diet and abusive handling when used for photo ops and close encounters with the public.”

If passed by the Senate and signed into law, HB 1248 would impose a $1,000 fine on anyone who violates the prohibition on allowing a member of the public to hold or even pose with a tiger or bear cub or any fully grown big cat or bear.

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